Introduction

The route is based largely on a publication by rambling enthusiast Laurence Main, who brough this path into being as a walk across the county of Somerset. He does not appear to have conceived it as part of a larger whole, even though it links two obvious national trails. You are certainly encouraged to look out a copy of his booklet, which is published by Thornhill Press of Cheltenham. The route, composed as it is of various local footpaths, lends itself to a good deal of variation and you are encouraged to tinker with my (or Laurence's) route as much or as little as you wish.

Somerset has a curious topography. It consists largely of broad areas of coastal plain at or near sea level (the Somerset Levels), divided by lines of low hills running generally in a northwest - southeast direction. The most obvious hill ranges are the Quantocks (a superb range of heathland tops giving fine walking) and the Mendips (a limestone escarpment that carries its own official path, the West Mendip Way). There are others, notably the Brendon Hills, outliers of Exmoor.

The route traverses several of these hill ranges. Indeed, I deliberately introduced an otherwise unnecessary dogleg to take in the Mendips and in particular Cheddar Gorge, arguably the scenic highlight of this walk. Most of the other changes I made to Laurence Main's original route were to keep the hike within hill country. You do, of course, have the option of folowing the paths across the Levels if you wish. Although it's flat country it is very lush, and you do have constant views of the hills and woodlands all around.

The scenery is generally pastoral, apart from the heath and forest country of the Quantocks and the Brendon Hills. You're in farm country and will find yourself predominantly among crops and livestock. Take heed of the Country Code; take care not to cause harm to plant or animal life and avoid damaging fences, gates or farm machinery. Keep to the paths. And take care with gates - be sure to close them securely after you.

The route does, of course, traverse through several of Somerset's main towns. We visit Taunton, the county town; Wells, a delightful cathedral city; Street, a major shoe-manufacturing centre; and Glastonbury, a place shrouded in myth and legend and spiritual home to every ageing hippy in Britain. And of course the route terminates in the elegant Georgian city of Bath, a former Roman spa in a magnificent setting.

A word about footpaths. National trails and long-distance paths are well maintained and suitably waymarked, but local paths can be a different matter entirely. If you've followed the narrative of the Devon Coast-to-Coast route you will already know the problems. Basically, paths that exist on the map will not necessarily do so on the ground. If you pick out a series of paths on the map and then attempt to follow them, you will come to grief once every two miles on average. Landowners and farmers treat the path network with contempt. You will find crops, hedges, fences (wooden, steel and electric), and barbed wire blocking the route. Field boundaries the path is supposed to follow will have disappeared, making navigation difficult. Sometimes there will be situations in which the path is not actually blocked but could simply never have existed in the first place. And occasionally the blockage will be deliberate.

I've routed the path away from such difficulties wherever possible but of course individual situations change from year to year, and even from month to month. I am shortly going to implement several revisions, largely adopting new trails, that should make the route shorter, easier to follow, and more enjoyable to walk. Some details:

Upcoming Revisions

Logistics

There are no natural hazards in Somerset, apart from mud. You may meet a lot of this. Farms tend to be naturally muddy places, besides which much of the county is low-lying and is prone to floods. Several of the "green lanes" which look so promising as walking routes on the map turn out to be impassable, knee-deep watercourses. You would be advised, therefore, to avoid tackling the route during or soon after wet weather. July, August and September would be best.

The various one-day walks that make up the Somerset Way:

Links

Devon Coast-to-Coast	Back to main index	Cotswold Way

This page last updated 20th January 2008